Gonzo Papers - The Great Shark Hunt by Thompson Hunter S

Author:Thompson, Hunter S [S, Thompson, Hunter]
Format: epub
ISBN: 0743250451
Published: 2010-06-06T04:00:00+00:00

Gonzo 1 - The Great Shark Hunt

PART 3

Traveler Hears Mountain Music Where It's Sung

Renfro Valley, Ky.-- The Bluegrass country is cold and brown in the winter. Night comes early and the horses are taken inside to sleep in heated barns. The farmers sit around pot bellied stoves and pass the time with a banjo and a jug and sometimes a bit of talk. Not many visitors in the winter. Not much to do, either.

Here in Rock Castle county the biggest event of the week is the Saturday night show in a little spot on the map called Renfro Valley, a big barn and a recording studio on U. S. highway 25, about 50 miles south of Lexington.

Ten years ago they flocked to this place like pilgrims to the shrine-- not just from the nearby Bluegrass towns, but from all over the nation. They came for the country music and the All-Day Sings and to get a look at the Old Kentucky Barn Dance they'd heard so often on their radios at home. It got so big that 15,000 people showed up one summer Saturday night, and a national magazine sent down a team of cameras to record the scene for posterity.

Now perhaps 150 will show up. They come down from Berea and Crab Orchard, and Preachersville, and from places like Egypt and Shoulderblade across the mountains. Not many from out of state. Not even enough to justify using the barn, which is closed until spring, when the crowds will pick up again.

Only the locals show up in the winter. They come with guitars and bass fiddles and old songbooks, and they gather in the studio to do a radio show that you can still hear in some cities, but not in so many as you could a few years back. The show starts around 7 and winds up at 9:30 -- just about the time the hillbilly singers and the Bluegrass banjo champs are warming up at Gerde's in New York's Greenwich Village.

Folks around here don't have much time for strangers. You ask what goes on at Renfro Valley and they shrug and say, “Not much.” You want to find a restaurant after 8 p.m. and -- if you can find anybody to ask -- they'll direct you to Lexington, an hour's drive.

You have a thirst and they tell you, “This here's a dry county.” Pause. “Yep, dry county.” Another pause. “Maybe if you go up the road a piece to where you find a sort of restaurant, maybe somebody there can fix you up.”

So if you want entertainment in these parts, you go to Renfro Valley and you go early. The studio is warm and the music is every bit as real as the people who sing it.

“Well, now, for all you folks out there in radioland, I want to say that we got a little gal visitin' with us this evenin'. Little Brenda Wallen, from up in Winchester, I believe. . .”

And little Brenda sings: “Beeyooteeful lies, beeyooteeful lies.

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